Windows Vista and Multimedia

Vista is out. Everybody knows that. With every new
version of Windows OS we are bombarded with promises like: This Windows will do
"this" and "that", easier, better, faster...etc. So while
the other guys were busy with other Vista features I have tried to find out
something more about Vista's multimedia
features. Does it really make multimedia easier, better, faster?

The
installation is easier and faster. We started the installation out of Windows XP
and chose the option to install Vista. We've
made a new partition and off we go. After somewhat 30 minutes, Vista
installation was completed. Good. Nice and neat Aero Glass graphical interface
popped out. It makes really good first impression. Visually Vista is perfect, but sound? Not really.

Vista only failed to instal one of the pieces of hardware we had on our test machine. It was the sound card, Creative's Audigy 2 Platinum. We had to do it manually. We found the beta driver from Creative support site (dated 12 January 2007). We were lucky with that one since there is number of sound devices that still have no drivers for Vista.

After we managed to get our sound card working, first thing we've noticed is that the audio controls look a bit different under Vista.

If you
are wondering where the hell are the level controls for audio playback or
record, you can find it under Speakers properties. I'm not sure why the guys
from Redmond
buried those controls under so many clicks?

For
Audigy most of the stuff is working except there is no support for CMSS2
and there is no advanced EAX support, not yet at least. Also there is no application for Sound
Font technology which makes it unusable. Ok this is the beta driver, so
probably in the future we will have those features as well. On the other hand
Audigy is capable of reproducing and recording in Vista
with sampling rate up to 192 kHz and 24bit resolution.

Than we
tested professional audio application behavior under new generation of Windows.

Steinberg Cubase SX
3 was the obvious choice. It doesn’t have any support under Vista
but we managed to install it and run it. ASIO driver was working as well, but
we have experienced some performance issues under Cubase system.

ASIO
driver was struggling to squeeze performance out of my machine (AMD Athlon
4000+ X2, 1GB Corsair RAM, 500 GB HDD, ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard and obviously
Audigy 2 Platinum). After only 2 stereo tracks in Cubase and applying some VST
reverb the performance bar in Cubase was oscillating around 30% and we heard
some audio clicks. ASIO was working under setting of 4ms, which works fine in
XP. So we had to increase latency to 7ms to get rid of the pops and clicks.

So is
Vista actually slower than XP? If you would
like to find out read on...

After
that I was curios to actually find out the difference in speed using the good old
Photoshop filter benchmark. So we took a picture size 4320x3240, 40 MB 300dpi
and then process the image using Radial Blur filter (Amount 100 Blur Method:
Spin Quality: Best).

In XP
computer did it in 2min and 18.3sec. In Vista
the score was 2min and 20.1 sec.

We would
also like to try DIVX encoding performance, but due to the lack of (official)
support for DIVX software under vista we didn't manage to do that. Anyway, if
you are struggling to find good codec pack which works under Vista
then we can recommend Vista Codec Package v4.29.

If
you have a Windows mobile device such as WM Phone, forget about MS Active Sync
application. Vista has a new feature called the Windows Mobile
Device Center which looks nicer. Vista
gives you some basic support like file explorer for Windows Mobile systems and it
allows you to upload or download files or pictures.

In order to use all
possibilities like synchronizations, etc. you'll need to download Windows Mobile Device
Center application from
Microsoft website.

On
the other side Symbian UIQ based device didn’t have such luck as Windows Mobile
systems. We have tried to connect our Sony Ericsson P990i but later we have
find out that the device is not supported yet. There are no drivers from Sony
Ericsson or Microsoft. Too bad.

Conclusion

Well
after all this we can say that Vista is offering some interesting features, yet
nothing spectacular new or extremely exciting (except for visual experience!)
mainly because the lack of support for devices (read drivers). It seems that
manufacturers did not yet embrace the Vista
fully and we are expecting that it will happen in a nearer future.

If
you need support, performance and features that work with wide range of devices
than for the time being you should stick to the good old XP. But we must admit
that the new Vista is looking beautiful, hot and
tempting.